That's a slight exaggeration, but when the British actor read the script for "Sleepy Hollow," he immediately wanted in and fought hard - and successfully - to win the role of Ichabod Crane.

In Fox's update of Washington Irving's "Sleepy Hollow," Crane and a resurrected Headless Horseman are thrust into the modern day, as Crane joins forces with detective Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie) to hunt down the murderous Horseman, who's part of a bigger, time-spanning conspiracy.

And did we mention that the newfangled Horseman wields automatic rifles and machine guns?

"I really wanted this job," Mison said, speaking by telephone from his London home. "During pilot season there are lots of scripts thrown around, and this year this one certainly stood out. I was over here in London for pilot season, but still a few scripts escaped over the Atlantic.

"There are some you read that are dreadful and some that are interesting and some, like this one, that you read and think, 'This is going to be so cool.' You couldn't help get excited about it just from the script.

"So I always knew that it would be one that would be exciting to do, and it lived up to that initial thought.

"I remember first reading it. I was at a coffee shop near my flat in North London, just grinning like an idiot, particularly about the action pieces, the set pieces.

"When you've got Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci and Len Wiseman writing action sequences, they can't help but make you grin like an idiot, really."

Mison, whose credits include "Mysterious Island" (2005), "One Day" (2011) and "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" (2012), said that he'd never seen anything quite like "Sleepy Hollow." It boasts numerous components that other shows have pulled off, he said, but has all of them rendered convincingly in a single show.

"It's got huge moments in history seen from a new light," Mison said. "It's got the supernatural and it's got buddy-cop-show elements. It's got a fish-out-of-water story. And, as I say, it's got all of them in one show and done remarkably well.

"So far as Ichabod, I find it really interesting when you take an already-established character and throw him into a completely new situation. When you read really beautiful characters like Washington Irving wrote, it's a revelation. Ichabod is so clear and so brilliant, and you can picture him. And you often wonder what characters like that would be like under different circumstances, to get an even fuller picture of them.

"Throwing Ichabod into a completely different world, 250 years later, and seeing how he copes, is fascinating."

Several years ago Mison co-starred in a British miniseries titled "Lost in Austen" (2008). It put a reverse spin on "Sleepy Hollow," plunging a present-day young woman into the world of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," with Mison as the charming Mr. Bingley.

"Just her being there threw all of the characters in completely different directions," Mison said.

"That was fairly successful, the portrayal of this kind of story, and I found it really satisfying. So to have another go, taking it in the opposite direction, I didn't really want to pass it up."

In addition to Crane, the Headless Horseman and Abbie, "Sleepy Hollow" also will introduce Captain Irving (Orlando Jones) and Katrina (Katia Winter). The former is Abbie's superior officer, while the latter is Crane's wife, a witch from a Sleepy Hollow coven whom Crane struggles to free from a netherworld.